Moments of Rare and Fragile Grace
by Fluffernutter8
Summary: How do you know? he said & the answers fell like feathers, or the first snowflakes of November, light & without words. I looked in his eyes & smiled. You just know, I said. A collection of short Hodgela oneshots.
1. Chapter 1

This is the moment that Angela knows that she could fall in love with Hodgins. Not the moment she fell, that wouldn't come until later. No, this is before first dates where she felt like she could fly, before the hyperawareness of her own breath as Booth played the Gravedigger's message for the first time, before the amazement of Hodgins's dirt-smeared face hitting clean air.

This is a moment probably forgotten by everyone but her, as so many things are. It is early August, her birthday. She stands by the door to the lab as her father strides out, away from her. He is going to Dresden to play a show. He is leaving before cake, and she is supposed to understand because she always has. She hugs him goodbye, and saying she lets him go would be inaccurate. It's not about her permission as much as it is about his desire to leave.

She sighs and turns and takes herself to her office. She does a couple of sketches, some old skulls from Limbo. The charcoal is soothing in her exhausted hand, and so she startles when a set of large fingers slides onto her shoulder.

"You okay?" Hodgins's voice comes, calming as the charcoal.

She nods, leaning further over her pad. "Sure, of course. Why wouldn't I be?"

"Right," he says, enunciating the last letter before he makes himself comfortable in the chair beside her, propping his feet on her desk, even though he knows that she hates that. But, she notices, he has placed his clunky boots on the opposite side from her, so nothing flakes off onto her clean page. They sit for a minute, then two, before he speaks. "I don't remember my father smiling. Not at a joke over dinner, or if I got good grades, or when he looked at my mom. Not that I blame him for that, she was one cold fish."

He picks up a pen, fiddling with it. "A lot of the guys at school were angry or sad to be there, but not me." He flips the pen over between his fingers. "Boarding school was the best thing that ever happened to me. It meant being away from my father and his total lack of caring. If I had lived in that house, I would probably be a dead guy in a suit, sitting scared in a board room under my old man's scowling portrait."

Angela turns, lays a hand on his arm. Her fingers leave faint, dark charcoal marks on his sleeve. "You in a suit? Not a realistic image."

"In my mind," Hodgins tells her seriously, "it's made of duct tape." He leans back in his chair, gesturing with the pen. "I'm not saying this because I want you to think you have a great thing going with your rock star dad. Or because telling you about my joyless childhood might get me laid. I just want you to know that sometimes dads mess up- you're in really good company there. But sometimes it can turn out okay anyway." Their eyes meet and hold for a long moment before he checks his watch and holds out a hand. "Come on. Zack should have been able to get all those candles lit by now."

She laughs and lets him pull her up. "Yeah, that is not so comforting for a girl on her birthday."

Later that night, she talks to Brennan in North Carolina as they both get ready for bed. When her best friend asks how her birthday was, Angela tells her about cake and Zack's surprisingly nice voice and even (hesitantly, considering recent events) about the short time that her dad was there. But she doesn't mention talking to Hodgins. She considers it, but then decides to keep it inside, where the special moments of her days live.


	2. Chapter 2

Hodgins's house is far too big for him. Angela stands uncomfortably by his front door as he goes up the stairs to pack a bag. He waves for her to follow him up, but she ignores him, choosing instead to get whatever glimpse of his darkened house is afforded her from the foyer. She understands why he spends as much time at the lab as he does. Half of the furniture in his living room is shrouded in dust covers and either Hodgins has an alternate personality, or the visible, form-over-function pieces were picked by someone who was decidedly not him.

Halfway up to the landing, though, he sways a little, and Angela takes the steps in twos to reach him. They walk the rest of the way together. He doesn't stumble again, but she keeps a hand on his arm, just in case.

Hodgins's bedroom is the second door on the left. He opens the door and goes in first. "This is definitely not the way I imagined showing you my bedroom for the first time." Even as he says it in that wry, Hodgins tone, she can see his eyes darting around. She is fairly certain that he is unaware of the muscle twitching erratically under the skin in the side of his neck, but Angela needs to remind herself that staring isn't polite, and tear her eyes away.

Her facial muscles feel stiff and her voice alien as she tries to answer lightly. "I get the feeling that in your imagination, I was mostly interested in the bed."

"Yeah, and the underwear was in a totally different context," he replies, holding up a handful before tossing it into a small duffle along with rolled up balls of socks. There are at least four pairs of each, and she wonders how long he is planning on staying. Somehow, when she invited him, she didn't think up a time frame, even for herself.

Angela moves from the doorframe to sit on his bed. She suddenly feels exhausted. The metallic flavor that signals adrenaline is gone from her mouth. "Before this all started, all I was worried about was that I needed to do laundry so I wouldn't run out of clean underwear."

"And all I was worried about was that Zack would come up with more interesting evidence than I did." He zips up the bag and sits down beside her. They lean against each other.

"King of the Lab, huh?" She starts to cry as she says it, a blurry, silent rush of tears.

"Yeah," he tells her, unashamed. He is so purely himself that she cries a little harder. She turns her face into his shoulder, presses her lips dryly against his shirt. She sits there, and Hodgins sits beside her. His body shudders every so often, disturbing her, but not enough to make her move. She knows that if she looks up, she will see the tears on his face, but what matters is his body next to her, warmly breathing and talking and being alive.


	3. Chapter 3

It might seem a little disrespectful because of the proximity to dead people, but they do it in Angela's office at least once a week.

"Much like Roger and his geeky teenage buddies, that is something I never got to do in high school," Hodgins remarks, grinning, as he pulls on his t-shirt.

Angela grins back as she readjusts the slipcover on the couch. She teases, "Rich boy like you couldn't get some?"

"Well, I went to a rich boy school, so I wasn't exactly Prince Charming. My money was as good as anyone else's." His voice is still light and uninsulted as he sits down in her desk chair, spinning himself slightly with his foot.

"It's okay," she tells him fondly, "you can be my Prince Charming. I think your money is very special." He snorts, sliding onto the couch to sit next to her instead. She leans over to kiss his cheek briefly. "What were you like in high school?"

Immediately he says, "Oh, I was a bad boy." She snorts. "No seriously. I knew I didn't want to take over the Group from my dad so I wouldn't make nice with the Future Business Leaders of America and the only other people who were rebelling against their destinies weren't interested in science as much as they were interested in toking. So instead of the chem lab where I wanted to hang out, I ended up in the alley by the dumpsters." He sees her looking at him in disbelief and shrugs expansively. "What, you can't picture me with the druggies high on Daddy's money?" He sighs reminiscently. "They set me straight about the Lone Gunman. They were the first ones to call me Doc. Although that was less because they thought I would make a good doctor and more because I wouldn't shut up about the vine weevil attacking cannabis plants while they were trying to smoke those cannabis plants."

"Oh, my God," she laughs. "You'd better have a gang jacket or some secret tattoos to balance out the ancient crush you have on these guys."

He mutters something against her temple about letting her check for secret tattoos as he starts pushing her back on the couch. Once a week is about to become twice when Zack walks by carrying a tray of instruments far past the time when he should be gone. He's focused on whatever he is doing (and it's not like Zack is number one aware of his surroundings guy) but the two of them make a hasty nonverbal agreement to wait until they get home.

"What were you like," he asks, readjusting himself on the couch, "back in your side ponytail days?"

"Well," she says, teasing, "I went through a surprisingly long Goth phase." He looks at her in disbelief and she nods. "Yeah. I gave up my hippie girl skirts for my last two years of high school."

"Why'd you stop?"

"I got to UT, and Texas was just too hot for black leather and ten pounds of makeup."

"Why'd you start?"

Her face becomes sadder in phases, a slow shadow falling. She continues to look at him, but seems as if she wants to look away at her hands or her lap. "My dad was away more often than he was home, and when I was a kid, I had a nanny, Kathy, who stayed with me and took care of the house when he was gone. She stayed around until I finished eighth grade, but then she got pregnant and my dad decided to let her go and just have me live with my Aunt Bev in Pennsylvania."

"You didn't get along?" He turns over so he is facing her more directly.

"She was fine," Angela says, somehow managing to sound both firm and vague at the same time. "She just didn't really get me. I mean, I built a computer in the garage the first summer I was there and she didn't understand why I would do that. Aunt Bev was very… pragmatic and technology didn't seem like a sensible career choice at the time."

"And art?"

She laughs, dropping her head back against the couch. "Oh, God, don't even get me started on my art. Did you know I worked in a hardware store so I could pay for paint and brushes?"

His voice has a ripple of laughter running through it as he says, "You do know your screws."

"Hodgins!" She pushes him away from her, laughing.

"What?" Hodgins pulls himself up, gesturing helplessly. "I meant that you built your own computer. You have technical skills! It's not my fault your mind leaped somewhere it was not supposed to go."

She adopts a tone of dignity and says, "Hey, my mind is supposed to go everywhere." They laugh for a good, solid minute. When they calm down, he looks at her.

"I wish you could have had a better childhood."

"There are worse ones to have," Angela tells him, shrugging. "And, hey, it got me here, and here is pretty great."

"Yeah," Hodgins says quietly, "It is." He slides an arm around her shoulders and lets her lean against him. He is tired, and bed sounds like an amazing idea, but right now he is just happy to be here too.

**A/N: Sorry about the wait. I've been meaning to post this for a while, but life just got away from me. For that, you get two chapters!**


	4. Chapter 4

Angela has never been religious. She was mostly just spiritual and that was always enough for her.

When Brennan called her, she was updating some equipment at the Hoover.

"I am taking Booth to the hospital," Brennan's voice told her, clipped and alien.

"I'll go with you. I'm just a couple of floors away. I can be there in just a minute."

Brennan told her "There isn't time," and Angela became afraid. She finished her project mechanically and packed up her bag. As she went down the stairs- she couldn't stand the thought of being around other people in the elevator- she passed Booth's floor. Her feet didn't listen to her brain and she was in his office, behind his desk. She sat there for five minutes, ten, then slid open the top right drawer and took out the rosary she knew Booth kept there before going to join Brennan in the hospital.

Now she runs the beads through the fingers of her right hand, feels the cool metal of the cross. She doesn't know what to do with it. She isn't used to feeling helpless. She is usually so confident, so comfortable in herself that the uselessness shakes her more just for feeling it.

The door to the chapel opens behind her and she spins, alarmed. It's just Hodgins, but she has to force herself to relax. Halfway through unclenching her left hand, she tenses again. "Is Booth…?"

"Fine," Hodgins tells her wearily. "He just got out of surgery. They have him in post-op now." He sits beside her, and she blinks, remembering that it's been hours since they got there. She hopes Cam has told the Jeffersonian, because she doubts that any of them will be in tomorrow. "I just got off the phone with his brother. He's trying to get a flight, but he doesn't know when he'll be able to get back."

"Is Parker coming?" Angela asks, wiping tears on the side of her hand. She doesn't remember crying these particular ones, but they come and go.

"Brennan talked to Rebecca, and apparently she doesn't want him to be here in case…" _In case he dies_, hangs in the air even if neither of them say it, but Hodgins can't take that. She watches his fist clench, almost clinically counting down until he explodes. Sad is too much for Hodgins. Angry is familiar and safe, a blinding, distracting wave of heat. His leg kicks out, but the pew in front of them doesn't dent or break. "Goddamn it!"

"Hodgins." It's a reflex, really. Because despite the beads between her fingers and the Jesus statue staring at her from the front of the room, it's what she's thinking too.

He says fiercely, "No, Ange. This is not okay. He agreed to get hurt in the line of duty. He signed up to protect people, even if that meant getting shot or stabbed or beaten or poisoned. How can he not be able to protect himself? He didn't agree for his body to betray him."

She grabs his hand in hers, and there is power in her touch, because he deflates, collapsing next to her. "He's your friend, Jack. It's okay to be angry. I'm angry too. And shocked and sad and scared. But there's nothing we can do now."

His hands cover both of hers again. She realizes that she's been running the rosary through her fingers so roughly, it could have broken. "I don't even know how to use this," she tells him, and it's her voice that breaks instead.

He draws in a breath, gathering the power for his turn to be the strong one. His arm settles around her, heavy and comforting. It somehow manages to make her feel better, even though she can see his bitten down nails. "Say whatever you need to. We'll ask Booth when he wakes up."


End file.
